The present invention relates to the field of user interface design and, more particularly, to utilizing cross platform streamable user interfaces to reduce software deployment frequency caused by user interface improvements.
The importance of mobile applications to businesses have increased dramatically driving the need for aesthetically pleasing and feature rich applications. It is not uncommon for mobile applications to go through many changes during development and/or release. For example, mobile applications are released with a user interface which is continually improved and beautified over the course of the lifetimes of the applications.
As more mobile platforms arise and change, the requirement for application support of multiple different mobile platforms increases. For example, companies rely on providing application access to customers on mobile phones, tablet devices, and desktop computers. Currently, traditional mobile platform application development relies heavily on proprietary frameworks and brute force development of individual applications for each supported platform. That is, the traditional approach requires development of one functionality for an application must be implemented and tested on each platform separately or rely heavily on runtime frameworks which introduces significant application overhead and results in decreased application performance. Consequently, these approaches consumes a significant amount of development time (e.g., framework learning curve) and cost (e.g., framework license cost).
User interfaces are perhaps the most plagued by this divided approach to heterogeneous platform support. To achieve a cohesive solution, user interface designers and developers must work in tandem to deliver a usable product, frequently using many disparate tools (e.g., SKETCH, PAINTCODE, and/or VISUAL STUDIO). Many times user interface design decisions during key developmental cycles can negatively impact developmental progress and vice versa. For example, when a user interface change such as a reordering of screens is performed by the user interface designer, the change can break previously tested screen interoperability application functionality verified by the developer. This problem is further compounded when the application is redesigned multiple times during the development cycle. Each time a user interface design improvement is made, the application must be redeployed. This can frustrate users who are forced to download and/or install the application multiple times to receive the improvements during the development cycle. This extra overhead can impede user usage and damage brand positivity, resulting in lost users and lost income.